


What The Water Gave Me

by TheCarrot



Series: Elementals [1]
Category: The Librarians (TV 2014)
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Elemental!Lits, Elementals, Gen, Jacobs controls water, M/M, Magic, Mentions Suicide, Mermaids, Slayton - Freeform, The Library, the evil kind
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-18
Updated: 2018-10-18
Packaged: 2019-08-04 04:31:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16339871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheCarrot/pseuds/TheCarrot
Summary: Jacob's always been able to control the water, ever since he was small.





	What The Water Gave Me

**What The Water Gave Me**

 

__

The world's a beast of a burden  
You've been holding on a long time  
And all this longing  
And the ships are left to rust  
That's what the water gave us  
-Florence + the Machine

 

\-----

Jacob is the water, constantly moving yet appearing unchanged, full of knowledge and power and the grit of years past. Water that can be gentle and calm but at the same time can also be the droplets that will demolish a city beneath the waves. He feels the pressure and roar of water under the soil, can follow its trail and dig a well to stem a draught. And then, as a teenager, he falls to his knees in dry arid fields once more. No water under the sandy fields to listen for, and he prays. Prays to God for a reprieve to the dryness, he calls for the rain and he shakes as it answers; falling for as long as his tears do. He swims and stays under the water for hours just to find a little peace from harsh words and vacant stares. Jacob finds his peace in a fish tank full of water and no fish.

 

\----- 

 

He’s a child when their powers come, his water and Eliot's lightning. 

It scares his parents to no end but they’re twins. 

They deal with it together. Between the torrential rain and anvil crawlers, they deal with their powers together.

Until they don’t. 

Eliot leaves a year before graduation and Jacob is alone. The water turns off in the house for an entire week and Jacob has to leave before he drowns out the entire town. It’s the only time he can’t make the rain go away with a whisper to the clouds. 

He’s out in the middle of a storm he’s created, one full of consistent rain and wind; but also one without lightning and thunder. It’s then that Jacob learns that the water he can control does not merely come from around him. Jacob finally learns how to control the water inside a persons body because the boy on the edge of the bridge is two seconds away from stepping off and Jacob can’t. He can’t stomach losing someone else. 

No one else. 

Even this person he doesn’t know.

Jacob holds the older boy by his blood until he can pull him back off the ledge and then they talk. On that rickety old bridge, in the middle of a rainstorm, they become friends and Slayton never questions why he never took that last step off the bridge. Chalks it up to fear and the underlying desire to not actually let peoples homophobia get to him.

They become best friends until Jacob leaves for the Library. 

Then Jacob becomes embroiled in a world of magic and suddenly his ability to control the water seems inconsequential in the face of Flynn and his artefacts. 

He never expects the day to come but eventually Jacob comes clean about his powers. Mostly out of sheer terror of losing two members of the only family he has left.

It happens late in the night, far along the coast of the Pacific sea when Cassandra and Eve are attacked by mermaids that drag them down into the depths of the ocean. The boys stand on the rickety pier in horror, Flynn already shedding his jacket to go after them, when Jake holds out his arm to stop the older Librarian.

Ezekiel frowns at the hard look on Stones face, then is taken aback by the faint shimmer starting to show that in his unnatural blue eyes. It’s far beyond the normal ice blue they usually are, almost as if they are mirroring the sunshine on the waves of the very ocean before them.

Jacob raises his arms up and out over the edge of the pier. The rumbling begins almost immediately and for a spilt second Flynn thinks of an Earthquake, dreads the thought of the mermaids causing another tsunami. It’s only when the oldest Librarian looks over the edge of the rotting wood that he sees it’s waves crashing against the pier.

“Stone?” Ezekiel’s voice is lost in the falling crests of water and the sudden screeching that comes from under the surface of the water. “STONE!”

Jake lets his eyes fly open, and now Ezekiel is sure of their colour; it matches the shade of a riptide after all. The cowboy grits his teeth and gives a hard tug to the air in front of him, almost falling backwards until Flynn catches him from behind, supporting him. Ezekiel braces Flynn and it’s only with the contact that they can feel the phantom pull of hauling something heavy out of the water.

The screeching of the mermaids grows louder and louder, turning into one long drawn out scream that deafens them. It cuts off just as Jake gives his own shout and one last hard tug before whatever he was pulling against seems to let go. The three men collapse backwards as a soaking wet Eve and Cassandra shoot out of the water landing in a pile on the pier next to them. 

The waves are gone and so are the mermaids.

The two women cough and sputter out the salty water even as they look around in question, grateful for the fast rescue.

“Eve! Oh my god Eve! That was close, man mermaids!” Flynn is up and by the Guardian’s side in an instant, patting her back and drawing wet blonde away from her eyes.

“Wh-wha happ-ned? H-how-d you ge’ us out?” Eve finally manages to croak out, slapping at Flynn’s hands as he tries to pull a piece of kelp off of her shirt.

Flynn pauses and turns to look at Jacob who has knelt down next to Cassandra; the historian however is careful not to return the look. “Stone?”

Ezekiel frowns, looking over the older man and if the thief’s seen that look once in Stones face,  he’s seen it a million times. It’s a face that says ‘it was a secret’, ‘he’s never told anyone’, and it also says he expects to be hurt because of what he can do. Ezekiel is not one for lies, he hates them, but secrets he knows and cherishes. So he speaks up, lets the fake explanation form on his tongue.... “That was the Monkey King magic wasn’t it?” He knows it wasn’t. It wasn’t even close to that type of magic.

All eyes turn from Stone to him and Ezekiel raises an eyebrow back at them, but it’s Jakes grateful expression that makes him ok with their stares. 

By the time the five of them get back to the library, the grateful look has changed to one of steel. 

“It wasn’t magic from the Monkey King...”  

Eve and Flynn turn to look at him, while Ezekiel and Cassandra, who had been behind him, come up on either of his sides.

Flynn frowns, cocking his head to the side. He opens his mouth to ask but Eve jabs her elbow sharply into his ribs to cut him off. She knows that look on her friends face, and Flynn asking endless questions will shut the cowboy up faster than anything.

“It’s from... a long time ago.” Jacob confesses. “It’s... I’ve always been-able too...”

Watching him struggle with words has Eve shaking her head again. “You don’t have to tell us Stone.”

The cowboy sighs, taking a deep breath as he pushes the hair from his face and meets Eve’s eyes. “No, it’s okay.”

He knows it’s okay to tell these people. So Jacob tells them of the water, of how he could always hear it in the rushing of the river and the calm lapping at the shores of the lake. No matter how far away from the actual water he was. Jacob tells them the story of a teenage him crying in the middle of a drought and then, only then, do the rains come. 

No one asks him why he was crying.

Stone smiles as he says how he can stay under water for hours, how he can control the water in a lake, in the air and even in a human body.

No one asks him how he figured that out either.

“I can’t freeze it very well, can’t make it boil, but I can move it. I can drag up something that’s being hauled to the bottom.” He sends Eve and Cassandra a rueful grin and the two girls laugh. 

Cassandra is the first to hug him, all bright eyes and radiating excitement, while Eve just claps him on the shoulder. 

“This is going to make for some awesome battle planes.” The blonde chuckles hauling the cowboy off towards her office before anyone else can get a word in. 

Cassandra and Flynn laugh, following immediately after them and Jacob just smiles widely, an entire weight seeming to come off his shoulders. His blue eyes sparkle in amusement this time, instead of power. 

“I’ll make the tea.” Ezekiel sighs, rolling his eyes heading off to the kitchen. “And make sure you guys change!” The others just laugh and Jake sends the thief an amused smile over his shoulder as he’s dragged away.

“Jenkins is going to love this,” Ezekiel muses to himself as he watches the back of Stones head disappear, his expression turning thoughtful.

**Author's Note:**

> here we go again....


End file.
